


singing like a bird about it now

by lapoesieestdanslarue



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fluff, M/M, and, loveletters, that's pretty much it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-20 10:57:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16135811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lapoesieestdanslarue/pseuds/lapoesieestdanslarue
Summary: Bucky,I still see you in my dreams. You’re always there but sometimes you’re just out of reach, and those are always the worst ones.





	singing like a bird about it now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [apolliades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/apolliades/gifts).



> title creds to Hozier what a gem

_ Bucky, _

 

_ I still see you in my dreams. You’re always there but sometimes you’re just out of reach, and those are always the worst ones. _

  
  


* * *

  
  


“There’s nothing honourable about not living your truth,” Steve said to him, deep in the black of night. “Doesn’t matter how many wars you fight for others if you can’t even win the one for yourself.”

Bucky is quiet, watching him with a pensive stare, letting Steve work it out as he thinks aloud. 

Steve lets out a breath, eyes focused on the bundle of letters bound together in his hands. “You don’t have to read them, if you don’t want. And I’d wait until you were out, but I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”

“You wrote me sweetheart letters?” He asks, the old term out of his mouth without his realising it, before he knows where it’s from or what it means. 

“Don’t flatter yourself Barnes,” he snipes back, back in the perfect rhythm of their old banter. Steve smiles then, and it’s sad, and Bucky wants so badly for him to be okay; for them to be okay. “I’ll be seeing you, then.”

“Yeah,” Bucky answers, taking the stack of letters, dog eared and in varying degrees of yellowing from age. “I’ll be seeing you.”

 

* * *

 

_ Bucky, _

_ I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.  _

  
  


* * *

  
  


“So,” Steve’s voice is muffled over the static of the line. “You’re finding it good there?”

“Well,” Bucky drawls. “At least it ain’t Jersey.”

That elicits a surprised laugh from Steve, and they exchange a few more pleasantries, before the ants underneath skin get too much to bear. 

“I read your letters.”

The other line goes dead silent. 

“Not all of them, only the first two.”

A beat of silence. 

Bucky sighs. “You break my heart, Steve. You really do. Only you could feel guilty for an act of God.”

 

* * *

  
  


_ Bucky,  _

_ I wish I had another lifetime, one where I ignored that goddamn chip on my shoulder and didn’t get myself into half the shit i did and I never hurt you the way I did. _

_ There, we’d still know each other. We’d be old men by now, maybe we’d even be dead. Maybe you would have come back from the front and I would have had enough time to work up the courage and kiss you the minute you walked in the door and by then surely you’d pick up on the total, lovesick fool I was for you. Or maybe we’d meet on a train, in a faraway land where war doesn’t touch anyone. I’d smile, and you’d duck your head and blush, and the hair would fall into your eyes and I’d just be gone for you, right there and then. You’d have me there like you have me now, hopelessly and desperately yours, from that very first glance.  _

_ There, in that life, maybe I’d deserve you. I swear, I’d spend every day trying.  _

 

* * *

  
  


“Why’d you kiss her?” Bucky asks, his voice heated and  _ angry,  _ which confuses him because inside, deep in his chest right in his heart, he just feels sad. It’s like there are rocks in his stomach and lead in his throat. It sends a wave of deja vú throughout him, upending memories like a thief rifling through a wardrobe. In the war, in a pub, him, Steve. The Agent; Carter. No, he thinks. That’s wrong.  _ Peggy.  _

Steve looks at him, his eyes older and heavier than Bucky had last seen them. “She has your lips,” he says, quietly, but strong. Sure. “Sometimes, I think if I could just--” Frowning, he stops. He doesn’t finish the sentence, so Bucky leads on. Like dancing. They used to dance together, practicing for the girls. Steve always liked it better when Bucky lead. 

“I loved you.” It could almost be accusatory, in Bucky’s voice. 

“And I loved you.” Steve says it like a death sentence, like a final blow. Like something he’s had to carry around for so long it only became a fertile source of guilt and pain. A seed never allowed to see the light. Was that Bucky’s fault? Was Steve’s? His memories, fractured as they are, don’t offer anything. 

It’s just what it is, Bucky resolves. A sombre truth, but a truth nonetheless. That’s just this goddamn bitch of a life they’re in. It was no one’s fault. It’s not their fault. 

“You never told me.” It could almost be heartbreak. 

Steve’s old eyes soften, catching on the way Bucky’s words hiccup, the way his lip trembles. “I didn’t know I could,” he explains, all soft-like.

Bucky swallows down his sadness. “It’s not your fault.” He looks Steve in the eye. “I think- It wasn’t either of our faults.” Another memory, poking through the folds of his mind like a pin. Steve, telling him stories about how the stars above them got to be strung together. There was a girl, he recalls, whose tears formed the sparkling dots they can see, still glittering faintly, still 1941. A broken heart over a boy she could never really have, left alone in the rain while he danced the rest of the night away, swirling celestial bodies along the milky way. 

“It was so scary,” Steve says, all of a sudden. “To love you so much. No one has ever had so much power over me.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


_ I miss you so fucking much and I need you. I need you, Bucky, to hold my hand and anchor me like you used to, the way you’d nudge my foot from the other bed or knock against my knee and how you could just bring me back to myself. I’m lost to myself, now, and you’re the only one who ever saw any of the good in me. I’m all bad now, baby, bad in the blood and in the bones of me and maybe not even you could bring that back. I’m in blood, stepp’d so far.  _

_ I’m trying to get drunk on two bottles of white wine because I want so badly to be with you, naked beside you and feeling like I’d just been born new again by the universe. We will, one day, I hope, and we’ll just lie there and become the sand beneath us. Maybe the tide will come and take us away, and I’d let it, because I’d go anywhere if it were with you and at least we’d be there just because we could, just because we wanted to.  _

 

* * *

 

Sometimes, when Bucky starts to feel lost in himself, he looks across at Steve, painting or reading or watching something or other, and remembers. 

It’s all he has left, it’s all he is to his bones. Ruined ruins of a war he never wanted to be part of and a lifetime of memories of a golden boy and the burning, unbreakable love he had for him. He’s a history of himself and Steve, tied with knots of flimsy rope and bursting at the seams.    
  


 

* * *

 

_ Give me this, Buck, if nothing else. Tell me you love me. Tell me that we were real. That’s all I need. The ghost of your lips, the shadow of your hand follow me around with every waking moment. But I need to know that it was real for you, not just for me. I know that me and Peggy were something but Buck— Bucky, you were with me every waking breath. Tell me that the irregular rhythm of my heart need only beat out of love for you and not for fear.  _

_ When the winter came, and I’d cooped up all day in bed, it used to feel like I was living out of necessity. That my heart was beating only out of muscle memory, and that breath came and went from my lips because it didn’t know how to do anything else, and it couldn’t even get that right. Then it was all attuned to you. And now you’re so far away from me, I’m at a loss, breathing out stattaco rhythms just because there’s something in me that won’t let me die.  _

_ I know this scares you, I know. So I’ll never send these goddamn letters and take what I get for what it’s worth and love it all anyways and hope beyond hope that you felt even half as much as me. You’ve got to be careful with me, because you’re in real danger of breaking me heart, and I’m in danger of letting you.  _

_ I’ll wait for you forever, you know that? And don’t ever doubt that. I’ll wait for you till the sun comes down, till the very last count. _

_ I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry I never told you. Please remember me. I still love you.  _

 

* * *

 

“I wish you had never met me,” Steve mutters, not looking at Bucky but speaking to him nonetheless, eyes fixed on the ceiling above them. “Then maybe we’d never be in this goddamn mess.” His fingers trace absent patterns on Bucky’s bare, exposed chest, their two lungs moving in tandem, flush against each other.

Bucky considers the statement. He’d be lying if he hadn’t thought something along the same lines of himself once or twice. If he’d never known Steve, he wouldn’t have so much to lose. Dying would be easy, without Steve. Remembering wouldn’t be so painful. If he’d never known Steve, his heart would beat out of that same monotonous necessity it had beforehand rather than a painful longing of something more, something unreachable, something that feels like devotion.

He considers it all, and knows in his heart of hearts the truth. 

He leans over and plucks the cigarette out of Steve’s mouth. Taking a drag, he answers, “If I’d never met you, I’d never have you to remember.” He turns to look at Steve, caught off guard when he meets Steve’s gaze. The words come out anyway, brazen and fearless in a way Bucky wishes he could be. “I wouldn’t give you up for the world.” 

It’s a promise, readily made and sealed with a loving kiss.

 

* * *

 

_ Dear Bucky, _

_ You’re dead asleep beside me, and you found me. You found me, and now I’m writing this on the back of your goddamn cigarette box as my final letter to you. _

_ I’m going to stop now. I’m going to say this to all of you, instead of shouting it into a void. But once more, for the encore, to stay true to it— _

_ I love you. I have always loved you. Since before I was even born, I think. From the cradle you pulled me out of to the grave we’ll make ourselves, and all the way through.  _

_ I’m still sorry. I’m still upset. I’m still regretful. But that’s okay, I think. That’s all there is to life, isn’t there? To love and be loved and to forgive and be forgiven. You help me be better. You have me, body and soul.  _

_ All my love, _

_ Your Steve _

  
  



End file.
